Green Gone Goo Goo

Going green and trying to be sustainable is a really good thing but it's now starting to go over the edge. While on a US Air flight this week I read an article about an entire university system that was green. Really? Are you kidding, the entire university was sustainable? I guess everyone rides bikes to school, it's all solar powered, all LEED buildings, they recycle everything, they produce energy, and take nothing from the earth and maybe they even grow their own cabbage right? Yes I'm being facetious, but we've got to admit that the greenwash that is happening right now is truly reached an all time high. It's this type of bogus hype that causes confusion in the market and pushes people to make poor sustainable choices, whether it be at home or in their building finishes.
I read a green carpet blog last week by a guy who said he saw a carpet executive on the weather channel and that the mill was "the most sustainable in the world." I guess everything on TV is real and factual now like the Family Guy. Sadly he didn't offer any data. Maybe he just liked the executives suit or something and thought it was made of hemp, who knows. Either way, it sure sounded like the executive was selling carpet using scary stories of species dying off from the planet. Not sure what that had to do with his carpet but it seemed to make this blogger a believer. Then he babbled on about some other unsubstantiated claims regarding another competing manufacturer who was the other "greenest" mill in the world. The funny part is that the second mill was diametrically opposite of the first mill as 2 companies could possibly be. Hmmmm. Please pass me some green peas and let's continue.

Then it all came out, this blogger was a carpet dealer who primarily sold both mills. Aha! The real green story came out. Big Money. That's often the problem with green stories. They get mixed up with the green of the Benjamin's. Not really an environmentally accurate or accountable sustainable blog at all, particularly to those people who have seen this dealer dump piles of old carpet in the landfill or out in his dumpster behind the warehouse. Is dumping old carpet in the landfill on a daily basis now a sustainable practice? Do they give carbon credits for that? I digress...

Anyway, for those people that really care about little things like facts and truths there are a few places to check out carpet mills and get some perspective on who and what is really green, based on today's knowledge of what those mills offer. Check out the following sites if you are confused by the green washing and think green carpet issues have gone goo goo and you may be able to make sense of the nonsense. And for heavens sake, don't step in the goo. That's just not sustainable and the goo is not green.

http://www.green.ca.gov/EPP/carpets.htm

http://www.scscertified.com/ecoproducts/products/